Your Guide to Simple Solopreneurship w/ Laura Adams

be like starting your own business. And so here it is today. You can't have it all, you know. That's that's for next year. We're also coming off the high of have just talked with Laura and we're recording this preview after the interview and feel it was fantastic, So I'm excited to share it. Yes, and I hope that you are ready to just take everything you learned this

week and just make some of the greatest changes. And if you are, then you're definitely gonna want to check out our sponsor for this show, Club bf F. We are so excited about this. If you love Frugal Friends and you found yourself saying I wish I could have more of this support, encouragement, community, actionable steps for life change. Well, we've heard you talking in your head and we have

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years all around up best frugal friends. Adulthood now also brought to you by doing it yourself. It's not just a concept for refurbishing furniture, fixing the toilet, or just washing the dishes. Do we get yourself can also be applied to starting your own business or side hustle. Of course, you can absolutely rope others in to help you, but you can be the boss doing it yourself when you want it done right. Also brought to you by the Boss. I don't know if that's a rapper's name yet, but

one day. So if you are interested in solo preneurship, side businesses making extra money, this you're going to get a lot out of today. But there are a few other episodes you can queue up if you are interested in those things. The first is episode one, how to make more money with a side business. We kind of go over these topics, but Laura really dives deeper into them, and then also episode eighty five side Hustles for people short on time. If you're looking to make some quick money,

then this might be a better one for you. But I think if you're focused on long term, maybe leaving your job stuff like that, you're really going to get a lot out of today's episode, and then also the Bright Future Bundle is still available also through Sunday, and Nika from Deptfrey going to be one of our speakers

has a Mercari Selling Guide which is amazing um. And then you also get access to all of the Day three talks which are all about earning more so definitely Frugal Living Summit dot com, slash a a P. If you have not picked up the Bright Future Bundle, get that and because it goes away forever on Sunday, Beautiful, Let's get into Laura's interview and what she has to say about this. Welcome Laura to the Frugal Friends podcast. So happy to have you. Thank you so much. I'm

thrilled to be with. Oh, this is a good topic, Laura, and you are an expert to be talking on it. I know so many people will be interested. I even as I was looking through the questions we're going to ask you, like, oh, my brother should listen to this. We'll see if he does. But okay, sometimes having these episodes to pass off to our own family member family absolutely so. Laura, tell us a little bit about your solo preneur journey. Yes, it is it's been a long one,

and it's it's been a winding one. Um. You know, I started working for myself really right from the very beginning. I've always been doing something on the side, whether it was working on flipping real estate, doing projects with my husband where we would buy distressed property super cheap and you know fix it up and on nights and weekends. You know, that's one of the early sort of side

hustles that come to mind. Then I started doing other types of online work, you know, writing, freelancing, you know, building a podcast, building a blog, all of that on the side, always keeping my day job. You know, I'm one of those people that never really had the desire to go into self employment full time. Initially. I always just wanted it to be a side project. I wanted the additional revenue. I wanted the variety too. I loved

having multiple things to do. I get bored very easily, so having you know, extra things to work on made a lot of sense for me. And my husband too is the same way. So we we worked together and a lot of those projects, and then you know, eventually we worked up to full time self employment. We had

our own retail store. We were actually in the floor covering business in central Florida for many years, and UM turned around years later and sold that business, and then we you know, got kind of got back into floor covering in different ways, and then I ended up getting my m b A. And that's really where I got into personal finance. That was kind of the fork in

the road for me. And I realized that a lot of the folks I was in school with, they were very smart, they were very very career oriented, doing very well in their careers. Some of them were even C level executives, they had multiple master's degrees, they were, you know, just all kinds of qualified, but yet they were failing drastically with their personal finances. And kind of a light bulb went off for me, and I realized, you could be super educated, super smart, and still not do well

with your personal finances. And that disconnect is what really turned me from kind of the corporate finance world more into personal finance answers. And I decided I was going to put some of the content that I learned in my m b A into podcast format, into blog format. And what I realized is the feedback that I was getting,

the positive feedback, was more about the personal side. People were asking questions about you know, retirement and investing and dealing with taxes and you know, just a lot of that personal stuff, much more so than the corporate side. And so that's when I really decided to kind of double down on personal finance content. And that was in gosh, two thousand seven, and so I've been podcasting and blogging, you know, literally every week since then about some personal

finance topic. Amazing, Laura, And isn't it something I'm with you in that Maybe I guess myth believing if you're well educated or you make a lot of money, you must be good with money. That's not always the case, and oftentimes it's not. I think I talked to the financial advisor recently who said that in his line of work and as he talked with others in that field, statistically, he was seeing that lawyers were the worst at managing finances.

I'm not really trying to call out lawyers, but I mean maybe, but to realize, okay, yeah, this tier of people that you think makes a ton of money, it doesn't mean that they're making wise choices with it. So amazing that you've honed in on that to help people not just if you don't make a lot of money. Just anybody interacting with money needs to be taught the

tools for it. That's it, you know. And they were dealing with a lot of debt, they were dealing with just kind of being unorganized and not really knowing how to prioritize their finances. You know. I would see people with a lot of credit card debt trying to pay off their mortgage early, even though the credit card debt was a much higher interest rate. Now that's just an example of kind of like, hmmm, they're really not thinking this through. You know, there is there is a better

way to prioritize finances and think about it. And so, yes, I do think there are some very successful professionals that almost feel like because they are an attorney or because they are a doctor, that they're supposed to look like a doctor, or they're supposed to drive the lawyer car and live in the doctor house and kind of keeping up with the Joneses, and it ends up really just meeting they are living way beyond their means and they've

never really created a budget, never really thought about am I providing for the future. Yes, I'm providing right now. I've got all these great toys and and you know, things to show for it right now. But in a lot of cases, the successful people that I was in school with had not even given retirement a thought. They literally didn't even know, you know, what a an IRA was.

They might be participating at work in a four oh one K, but maybe not even maxing it out, maybe not even like getting the full match from their employers. So just making a lot of mistakes that I could tell we're really going to bite them in the end.

And it was just not not a good path. And so my idea was, how can I make content that is easy to digest, kind of taking a lot of these really complex topics and trying to boil them down in a way that's actionable, that's quick and easy to understand, that maybe will help people put some plans into motion without getting bogged down into the details. Now, if people want to get into details and they want to get you know, really fine tuned with a financial planner, I'm

all for that too. But for most people, it's really not about complexity. It's really more about how can I simplify my finances in order to make sure I'm just automatically saving for retirement, I'm automatically putting some money away for an emergency fund, et cetera, paying the credit card automatically. A lot of those things are just easy systems to put into place that can help you have a lot more success. Love love love that there's so much in

your background, Laura. As I'm hearing you talk, I'm like, you're my spirit animal, working full time, fixing up houses, podcasting, wanting to have your hands, and a lot of things like yeah, oh boy, But it's it's evident that you didn't start your business that you're in now overnight. There was a journey to get there. It's not just a snap of the fingers. And it sounds like some different decisions along the way, interests maybe changing, identifying where your

skill set aligns. All that to say, if someone else is listening to this saying I do want to start a side business or just a business, what would you say is a good starting point for them? Yeah, So I always encourage people to really just test first, you know, thinking about is there a customer base? Is your idea, whether it's a product or service, is it a good idea? In a lot of cases, people love doing certain things.

Maybe they love I don't know, teaching, they love doing dog walking, they love doing some things, but if they truly got into it full time as a business, might not love it so much. So in a lot of cases, wanting to turn a hobby into a business, it may not be the best idea. So I always encourage people try it out, give it, you know, give it a few months, figure it out and find out will you still love it? Because if you don't love it as a business, it's probably not going to end up being

a successful pursuit for you. So, you know, is it something you love? Number one? Is there an audience or a customer base or a client base that is truly willing to spend the money for the good or the service? And you know, can you just give it some time on the side, So instead of taking that flying leap from that steady ve paycheck, can you try it on the side. And in the book that I recently wrote, Money Smart Solo Preneurs, I try to give people some

tips on ways to juggle both. It's not easy. Yes, it means you might have to work a little bit on in the evenings and on weekends, but for a lot of people. That is what you have to do to really get started. Get in there, figure out, you know, how can you make it work. And I tell a story in the book about when I was working for an employer also starting podcasting and blogging, and it was

two thousand seven, two thousand eight. It was, you know, a terrible recession was on the horizon, and my employer was feeling some of those negative effects, and I knew that he was not going to be able to afford me, you know, pretty soon we were going to be in a situation where he was I was firing a lot of our staff that I had hired, you know, a year or two earlier. So I knew that I was

probably going to need to go at some point. But I had this other side project that I was super excited about, and so I went to the employer and I said, is there a way that we could work something out, like let me scale back to three days a week, and that way you can pay me less, you can maybe afford to keep me on a little bit longer. But then I would also have time to

go do my other projects. And so it was a win win for me because I really needed more time to scale the podcasting and blogging that I was doing, and he needed to pay me less money, so it was a win win situation. And so that's just one example that's not going to apply to everyone obviously, But can you figure out a way to maybe get away for an hour and a half half in the middle of the day for lunch instead of forty five minutes, take that hour hour and a half and really focus

on your side hustle. I've done that too. Maybe you book a conference room in your office, or you just make sure that you shut everything down, you'd stop looking at email, and you just really focus on your business during that time in the day. You know, that's one idea.

Maybe you go to work a little bit earlier if you're commuting to an office, or you just start your day a little bit earlier at home and say, you know what, from this hour to this hour, before I even look at my work, I'm going to focus on my business. So there may be some ways to juggle your schedule. There may be some ways to negotiate with your employer that will allow you to really test out that business idea and make sure that it is something you want to do. For some people, they may like

the idea of keeping both for other people. They may really want to get out of that nine to five and they may want to scale up the business quickly. So it kind of depends on what your goals are. For me, I was very happy doing both for many, many years, and you know it worked for me. But it just kind of depends on your season in life

and what your business goals are. Such good tips. Yeah, I love I love that the first I mean right off the bat, like when you refer to it as test like what you want to do, it's such a great mindset shift because sometimes we see something and we want to do it, and then it doesn't work, and we feel like we've failed at starting a business, like we're not entrepreneurial or capable of starting aside business because you did it once or twice and they all failed.

But when you look at it as like, first I have to test, I have to test a bunch of different things to see what's going to a work and be what I'm going to enjoy. Some people will find something there may be successful at and find they don't enjoy it and keep doing it and then sometimes leave their job to do it. More So like going through this testing phase is a really important mindset shift to

make when you want to start a business. And yeah, I just loved like everything you said with the balancing of work, Like that's kind of something where Jill and I are different, Like I love being a entrepreneur business owner, like full time, that's my thing. And Jill was just telling me, she's like, I love having my job. I'm very happy doing the podcast and my job simultaneously. So it really is truly a spectrum. You don't have to be on either end to have like your own thing

on the side. Yeah, absolutely, and it you know, it is something that you do also have to think about your goals. As you said, what what happens to a lot of people is they leave the nine to five and they realize that building a business is hard work and they're going to end up maybe working a lot more hours. Now, if you love what you do, that

may not be a problem. But if your goal, if your whole reason for starting a business is oh I'm gonna work less, I'm gonna work from the beach, I'm gonna you know, have all this time off, you may actually get more time off with the nine to five job and having that structured vacation, especially if you've been there a while and you've accrued several weeks of vacation per year, you know, that kind of guaranteed break or time off, or maybe you're a teacher and you've got

the summers off. Like having that may actually achieve your goal if you can think about it in terms of a goal achievement. And we do get bogged down in our jobs and we feel, oh my gosh, there's all this, you know, inter personal stress and issues going on. If we can step back and really think, does this accomplish my goal? For some people, it's all about can I save for retirement like every week every month? Can I

have a reliable income? And that's another really big hurdle when you work for yourself, your income tends to be variable in a lot of cases, very variable, and that can really stress out a lot of people if they don't have lots of emergency money to back them up, and that they hold them back from contributing to a

retirement account on a regular basis. And then all of a sudden, you know, you look back and it's like, oh my gosh, a year went by and I didn't make any retirement contributions because I just didn't know what my income was going to be. Again, that's kind of taking a step back for some people. So making that, making sure you understand what your goals are and what's important to you, and then building your life and your business around that, I think is the key to success.

It's such a good thing to highlight, Laura, And you've probably see me. I've just been nodding the entire driving internally. On the inside. I've been laughing at especially the vacation thing, like, yeah, you have vacations. Don't work for yourself because no one choice is ever without consequence, and says, so it is good to count the cost to say, will this actually achieve what I wanted to achieve? How will it do that? Am I willing for some of the downsides of this? Right,

It's not gonna be without some downsides or consequences. And if your business grows the way you want it to grow, that could mean needing to then hire people. And now you're a boss and do you want that? And bosses rarely get to disconnect even when they are on vacation, So there are a lot of things to consider with that, and it links to this as well, or I'm curious your perspective if there's anything to be said about support

in some of these initial stages. I'm sure a lot of times when we're just starting out, we don't necessarily have the money to pay somebody to support us in the process. But what's to be said about having someone to bounce ideas off of or to be some of that accountability or checks and balances. What are your thoughts around what support might look like in the beginning. Yeah, that's such a great question, because I do think that people can tap into other folks, whether it's a mentor

um like. You know, what comes to mind is maybe somebody that's wanting to get into let's say, real estate sales. You could be an assistant to a very successful agent and kind of learn the business, maybe work for a relatively low wage or some kind of profit sharing with them in order to get some confidence, learn the business, get their support, And it really will depend on the type of work that you want to do. But in a lot of cases people probably tend and I think

this is especially true for entrepreneur types. We tend to be very independent. We want to just like do it ourselves and figure it all out. But if you step back and think about what are the resources, what are the people? Who are the people that I know that maybe doing something similar. Maybe they're not competitors, but maybe they're doing, you know, something similar. How can I tap into them for who's the accountant they use? What you know, what kind of advice did they get when they started

their business? What mistakes would they recommend I avoid. It's really easy to just tap into people for virtual coffees and you know, picking people's brains and if you can maybe help them a little bit, if they've got something that they need that you can help provide, they may be more willing to kind of collaborate with you. So I do think that's a very underutilized resources. Just reaching

out to people and asking questions. In a lot of cases, people are more willing to help you and give advice then you think they're going to be. And so I would recommend folks have a little bit of you know, confidence and just be willing to kind of put yourself out there and ask for help. Oh yeah, people love talking about themselves, So if you ask them about themselves

and their business, there golden. Especially if you have something to bring to the table, like inventory your skills and see what you can bring, because yeah, people will ask to pick my brain and be like, but you're not even and offered to buy me a coffee or anything.

Some people do. But then when they're like, hey, like I have experience in this, and I would love to hear your experience with this, um and I'm like absolutely, Like I mean even if I had just one question you can answer, It's been like completely worth my time and I would love to help anybody out. So yeah, definitely find a mentor or something, because your network really is your net worth. I know that's overused, but like

it's so true, really true. Yeah. So many people are nervous about starting a side business, and we talked about this briefly before we hit record, because they're scared of, you know, the organizational pieces, the incorporating the taxes, all of the all that stuff. So like what is important when you're getting started, and like what's not as important the stuff that can maybe wait. This is probably one of the most common questions that I get about starting

a business. It it's what do I need to do? Because there are a lot of people who are very hesitant to do anything with their business until they've got kind of like all of the pieces put together, and they are very scared about starting their work until they understand everything. Then you've got other people who are just like, boom, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna get out there, and they

don't think about anything. So it's it's funny. It's like there are two main types of entrepreneurs, and so the folks who are afraid of starting, they are typically wondering, do I need a business bank account, do I need to incorporate? Do I need some kind of license, what are like the logistics and the administrative piece of it. And what I tell folks is, in general, until you've made some money, you really don't need to do much. And I would say the only exception here is if

you're getting into a business that has some liability. Maybe you're going to, let's say, be a eaterer where serving food could you know, make somebody sick and they could sue you about something. If there's any liability that you could face, you may want to incorporate early on. But for the majority of folks who are starting some type of a service based business, they really don't need to do much until they earn about ten thousand dollars. That's kind of my break point where I say, okay, you've

earned ten thousand dollars. This is the point at which you're gonna need to really look at do I want a business bank account? And in most cases the answer is yes, because it's super easy to get in most cases free, and an easy way to separate your personal and your business expenses. Do I need to incorporate? You know, most people are pretty good as sole proprietors. Again, if you do want to limit your liability, you could become a single member l l C. That's what I am.

That basically means that I have a corporate structure, but I pay taxes as a sole proprietor, so I pay pull the the income out of my business and it gets reported on my personal tax return super easy. And that's you know, just one option in the book Money Smart Solo Preneurs, I kind of go through all of the different business entities that are common and show you what are the pros, what are the cons And you know, that's pretty easy to do once you've hit that ten

thousand dollar in revenue mark. And also maybe looking at do I need an accountant. Do I need somebody to help me figure out business deductions? Do I need somebody to help me stay organized? If you're not somebody that likes record keeping, you definitely may want to get a little help with this, at least in the beginning. A bookkeeper can set you up, can just make sure you're you've got a system in place that's going to be

easy to maintain going forward. You just don't want to miss any of those deductible business expenses because they're very valuable and if you're not tracking them, you're not kind of allocating what is personal what is business, you're not categorizing, You're gonna miss them. There's no you know, no way

around it. That's going to cost you money. So all of these things, the bookkeeping, the legal thinking about your corporate structure, all of that is really going to set you up for, you know, just a good system going forward.

And as far as licensing, in most cases, you're not going to need a business license unless you're doing something, let's say with alcohol or construction or something that is really regulated at the state or local level, and that's really easy to figure out, and you can go to your state website and it will tell you what types of licenses you may need based on the work you're going to do and goods you may need to collect sales tax if you're selling goods and you need to

collect sales tax. So that's another area of con start if you're selling goods. I mean in theoretically, like, if you're testing until you hit ten thousand, then your business can pay for all of these expenses, so you don't have to worry about not being able to afford to start a business. You can really, in this day and age, bootstrap it, make the money from your business and have it pay for itself. Don't incorporate and get these tax

id numbers and all of that. Don't waste your time with it if it's not something you know you want to do for at least several years moving forward. Like That's why I think the testing phase is so important, because you don't want to do all this work just to decide you don't want it, and then you have sunk cost and you keep at it for much longer than you should because you sunk all this money into it. Exactly.

That is the point for sure. And I do think that if you know, if you if you hit that ten thousand mark quickly, you know, fantastic, As you said, then you can afford to reinvest the money back in. Now, let's say you work for a whole year and you've made the ten thousand. You know, you may say, well, if that's not going to be enough for me going forward, you can re evaluate, or if you're at the point

where you're ready to scale, you can reevaluate. And in some cases, even the mixing of the personal in the business, if you're an organized person, may not be a problem. And I actually did this for many years. When I first started, I was putting personal and business expenses in the same bank account, but I was very meticulous about categorizing them so I could easily at the end of the year run a report that showed here all my

business expenses, here's my business income. Give that to my account, and they could easily tell you know what needed to be reported. So if you are really good and you're using a good bookkeeping system, then you know that's probably not going to be an issue. There's no law that says you have to have a business bank account, but I can tell you from experience that it definitely will help you. Truly think about your business in a new way and and really separating those financials. There's a lot

of benefit there. Particularly maybe you're thinking about selling the business down the road, that may be an area where you know, if if that's something that even comes to mind for you at all, you definitely want to be separating all those financials so you can show somebody what you're earning, what your expenses are, and be very clear

about that. But for most folks just starting out and testing an idea, you know, I think just starting slowly, as you said, Jen, not really getting overwhelmed with the administrative part of it is the key to having the confidence to just get out there, you know, try to get that first customer or client serving them. When you

get started, what you'll find is you may pivot. You may say, well, I thought I was going to offer this product, but really they need me to do this thing over here, and so that will help you refine your offer and make sure that you are serving the clientele that that you think you want to serve, or maybe you need to switch it up and figure out, gosh, you know, I've got the skills to do this other thing. Let me you know, now, pivot and focus on that.

For the person who wants to utilize this little startup business too and has the goal eventually leaving their job because they've earned what's possible for that to happen. What should they be doing in order to prepare for that exit strategy? What are some of those steps they would take? Yes,

so definitely the emergency savings is key. You know, we might be at the point where we're ready to leave the job and go full time, but that doesn't mean that the business is going to run smoothly from here on out right, And in many cases, the income is variable. It's gonna fluctuate wildly from month to month, so you want to be sure that you can get through the

lean times. And so for most of us, what that means is just having that emergency fund, and it could be a personal savings, that could be business savings that you're accumulating and having enough to at least get you through a couple of months that could be bad. You know, really lean months, do you have enough to get through and still make sure that you can invest for retirement and and hit the financial goals that you want for you and your family. So that really means starting now,

building that emergency fund. Now, so let's say if your goal was to have three months of emergency, maybe you want to go to six, or maybe even you're just starting out and you're you don't even have one month of of saving yet, you might want to make a goal to get that one month done and then rapidly begin to raise that savings rate over time. So think about in you know, the kind of the worst case scenario,

would you be okay? Would your family be okay? Insurance this is another area a lot of self employed people struggle with, especially leaving the full time job, is what do I do about health insurance? You know? What do I do about life insurance? Disability? All these things these kerks that we we have with the nine to five job.

A lot of self employed people don't know that they can go to healthcare dot gov, go to the marketplace and shop for plans, and if your income is below a threshold, you qualify for premium subsidies which make it

cost less. Now, is it cheap? No, Insurance is still expensive unfortunately, even with premium subsidies and a lot of cases, but you can definitely get a lot of help there, especially if you're starting out and your income is not that high yet, you're going to qualify for some additional help there that will reduce your premiums making it affordable for you and your family. So don't assume that just because I'm going to be self employed that I can't

have health insurance and I can't have life insurance. You can shop life insurance, term life is super affordable. I call it your self employed benefits package. You have to create that for yourself. So with the health, the life, even disability coverage, really thinking through what are you giving up when you leave the job, and then how can you replace that on your own? I mean, once you start to think about leaving the health insurance I think

is the biggest thing hurdle take it over personally. We use like health care sharing because that was even cheaper than the marketplace. But like we're you know, lucky enough to be very healthy and we have our son still on regular insurance. But like it can work, A ton

of people make it work. So if there is a business that you have and you do like I also see this other end of the spectrum where there are people that are holding onto their job by a thread for these benefits when really they could be taking their business like so much further if they just like let go of that thread. Yeah, and don't forget about Cobra too. If you leave a job that has group coverage, you

do qualify for Cobra for it typically eighteen months. It's not going to be cheap, but it is going to give you that full coverage that you're used to, the exact same coverage. So maybe you're in a situation where you know you're thinking about starting a family, or you know you really need some good coverage, you can at least maintain that and know that you know it's there

for you. I would say shop it. Always shop the Cobra against all of the other options, because you're probably you probably can find a cheaper option, but you know, just know you've got multiple options, maybe getting if you're married, you might get on a spouse's plan. If you're young, if you're under age six, you could get on mom and dad's plan if they're willing to keep you there

for a little while. You know there are options. Short term policies are typically cheaper, they don't have as many kind of built in benefits for you, but they are there to kind of bridge the gap between let's say coverage at work to the point where you're ready to get your own plan. So there are options out there, and I just would encourage people to do a little homework. Don't go without insurance. It's it's not worth it, absolutely yes, speaking of options and things that are worth it, and

you shouldn't go without the bill of the week. That's right, It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe maybe was born and his name is William. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Bills Bufalo Bills, Bill Clint, this is the bill of the week, all right, Laura. We invite every week either a listener or our guest to share with us their bill of the week, and so we would love to know.

Do you have a bill for us? A bill for you? I gosh, I would I would love to bill you for your expertise and maybe and maybe I would ask you to give me some advice on you know, what are your biggest tips for starting a business or even starting a podcast. If somebody out there is interested, I'm gonna I want to bill you for that. Oh my gosh,

that's the first a very unique I respect it. So I would say we start our podcast started in such a unique way that we neither of us intended it for it to be a business, and now it has grown into our i mean, my main business, and so I would say there definitely has to be some room for setting barriers up so you can be consistent with whatever you're doing, like not just podcasting, but I mean I think having our shows edited for us and just being very light on other things where people maybe we're

going heavier on it made it possible for the thing to be sustainable for us while we both had full time jobs, and before it could be a full time thing for at least one of us. So it may cut down on some profit at first, but when you're still around while the other guy has burned out, then

you will be thankful. I love that. Yeah, consistency is the key, and I do think, you know, for me, being part of a podcasting network put a lot of pressure on me because it was like, all right, there's a deadline here, there's you know, there are people who are counting on your content, and that really that accountability.

So I love what you said, Jen, because if you don't have that external accountability, if that accountability has to come from you internally, you've got to deliver, you know, and really be tough on yourself and make sure that you're creating consistent content, because yeah, I think that is one of the biggest ways to have success with especially with podcasting. Your sponsors will rely on that, right, They want to see that you've got a particular schedule that

you're keeping up with it. So I love that. Yet, consistency is stuff, and that's so true with a lot of things in life, right, investing, producing, I mean just so many aspects. I mean, you know, even just exercising, having a schedule to stay healthy, and all of that comes down to consistency. Yeah, for those of us who are not backed by large venture capital firms, we have

to go small and steady. That's a key love it, Yeah, And I would say self knowledge is a big component, especially if you're going to be entrepreneurial in your pursuits. Knowing what your strengths are, where your growth edges are, what happens to you when you feel stressed, the type of support that you need, what you know you really want to focus in on, and where you want to have others kind of do some of the mundane tasks.

Some of that comes in time as you work towards starting your own business, but having a pulse on that and doing a really decent introspective dive even before starting this to know where are the potential pit falls and how am I going to factor that in and care for myself and my business and others well as a result of that. Yeah, that's terrific. You can't lose yourself, you know. You have to continue building a life as

you build a business. And if you sacrifice you know, the family and friends and the relationships, you will look back and say, you know, was it worth it? You know, And and it's tough. Building a business is tough. You do have to make sacrifices. But I think trying to be as balanced as possible along the way, it was what you ultimately want as an entrepreneur. Right. Nobody wants to look back and say, oh, you know, all I did was I was working my business NonStop. Even if

you love it. You know, even if you love it, you still have got to remember the rest of your life and being healthy with relationship send you know, eating good food and moving your body, sleeping, well, all of those are just foundational to happiness. Yeah, and knowing that it's okay to not be good at all of the things. I was just Jen and I just had a big tist meeting last night, and I'm like, I don't like realizing that I'm not good at things. It's not a

comfortable feeling for me. And and I'll learn and I'll problem solves and I'll do the thing proficiently, but also giving grace to say it's not something I'm good at. And to own a business doesn't mean I have to tight fist do everything and be good at all of it. That's so true. It's a little soapbox. Yeah, I mean definitely, Laura, thank you for billing us. I love it if you have a bill of the week that you want to share with us, whether it's a bill you want to

give to us, or anything related to bill. You know the Drill Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill. We'd love to hear it. And now time for the lightning round. So this is the part of the show where we're going to build you for your expertise now, but we are all going to go around and share knowing the mistakes you would make. What's a word of advice you'd give yourself personally when you were just starting out. Oh man,

it would definitely be worry less. It would definitely be um trust in the process and trust experts to just jill. Just to what you were saying, you know, don't think you have to do it all that. There are experts out there. That's the reason they're experts. They are focused on certain tasks, and you know, give more up to them and don't worry about doing it all yourself. Wholl worry less? And we don't. We don't gain anything by worrying. I mean nope, there's no real action that comes out

of that. You lose some sleep, and sleep is sacred. What about you, Jen, So mine would be too focus on your one thing, not somebody else's. And I feel like I've been quoting this line NonStop, but like I love the one thing by Gary Keller, and I tell people in your spending, like find your one thing or your two things or something that you can focus on, Like what's the thing that you can do that makes everything else in saving or earning money easier or unnecessary?

But I wasn't necessarily finding what I wasn't looking for, what my one thing would be. I would look at what other people's things are and and try to replicate those while not being true to what I actually wanted to do and didn't want to do or what would work for my audience, because they're different from somebody else's audience. And so I would say, like, keep your focus on your one thing and then don't get distracted by shiny

object syndrome. But it's shiny shiny mine is similar to something we've talked about already and maybe just another facet to it, but finding ways to try it out before investing big. And I know we talked about in investing kind of with your time, but I would also add

investing with your money. And I think that there's so much advice out there to say, oh, yeah, you gotta sink at least five to ten grand into your business at the start to really make sure it's set up on the right foot, and that just it hasn't been my experience. It's not the advice that I would give to other people. I think there are ways to try to do what it is that you want to do

in the future for your side business. That does not cost a lot of money upfront to try it out before you invest big, whether it's financially, emotionally, with your time and build up to that, I think it's very possible. You don't have to buy all of the things because you may find out that you don't like it or you don't like that version of it, So don't spend a ton of money at first. Love it well, Laura, it has been so fun talking with you and hearing

all of your expert advice on this. We hope it's been helpful to our listeners. We know it. We know it's helpful to us. So where can people get more from you? And we know this is just the tip of the iceberg. So what else do you have for folks if they want to hear more? Oh? Yes, definitely visit Laura d Adams dot com. That's my site. I podcast weekly on The Money Girl podcast, and would just you know, love to connect with any of your listeners. I've been really honored to be on your show today.

You guys are really fun. This has been a great conversation, so I appreciate you bringing me in absolutely, thank you so much for hanging out with us. My pleasure. Thanks Laura.

It was such an honor to have her here because she really is I mean, she may have asked us about podcasting, but she is a podcasting stalwart, Like she has been in this industry for a really long time and is someone that like should be looked up to by all podcasters, especially female podcasters, especially female finance podcasters. So it was just like a pleasure to have her. And she is a like a fountain of wisdom that

I just drank from. She does speak so expertly and eloquently, and even though we have started our own business together, you and I, Jen and Eric and I have started our own businesses, there's still so much more even in that what fifty minute interview that that I gained from it. So enjoy it. I can't recommend her enough. Definitely visit

and get more from her at her podcast. Yeah, and absolutely Money Smart Solo Prenewer is her book where she goes through everything we talked about and it really expounds on it. I was telling her, I was like, I think, actually I need to read this book because it just there's a lot of things. I was one of those people that dove in and just started like my business and got and built the plane while flying it. So there are still things I'm learning that I need to

put into place. And to have it all in one book is really nice to start out. It can like ease some of your fears and empower you. So definitely check out her book. I will say it's a good thing your husband is an airplane mechanic. It's probably rightful for building the plane while you fly it. If anyone can do it, it would be you. In Travis, he he recommends to not do that, but I don't listen. I just keep flying. So the regulations say, BLA gets to me on the ground. Yeah. Well, thank you for

riding this airplane while it's still being built. And thank you for your kind reviews along the way on iTunes and Stitcher, like this one from premed Diva just happens to be five stars titled bird Box, and I'm not sure of the relevance, but it was a great review. I was terrified to open my eyes to finances in general. I'm so thankful to you gals for opening my eyes and showing me it doesn't have to be so scary. Prior to you guys, I was blundering around, blind to

my mistakes and places to make gains. The episode on student debt actually relieved me of shame I had about my own debt. Thank you, and that is the goal. That's the goal, yep. If we can eliminate shame, bring about freedom, help make this topic attainable. We have done it, and it were gonna keep doing it. We're gonna keep doing it. We're here all of the Prema divas who have debt and we're going to show you ways to pay it off and separate you from it and then

the physically there. We also want to thank our friends who share these episodes on social media. So when you share the latest episode and tag us on Facebook or Instagram, we're giving you our month. We're adding you to our monthly drawing. That's what it is. And for every five tags and reviews we get each month, we give away a copy of the Frugal Friends work Book, which is

even more content to help you in your finances. Yes, and this month you're going to have the choice between Frugal Friends Workbook or the All Excess Pass goes Away. And yeah, you'll get access to it essentially after it goes away. If you already bought one, we'll give you a refund whatever, or you have both a workbook and in all access. But we're really doing it for you this month because it's July. It's adult summer camp and

why that's how we're living. So keep leaving us reviews on iTunes or Stitcher and sending the screenshot to Frugal Friends Podcast at gmail dot com, and don't forget to share on social media and tag us at Frugal Friends Podcast. See you next week. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirian Jill Whirlwin. Week. As we're recording this, we have not actually experienced it. I just want to make that clear.

We've not yet been through it. But I'm gonna you know what, I'm just going to assume that I'm ecstatic. It's the twenty three and things are looking bright. The future of frugal is bright. We're about to launch Club BFF. We're on top of the world. We're friends, we're frugal, we live in St. Pete. What else is there? It's July,

it's adult souther gip. I love that I'm still stoked on Club BFF because I feel like it's super different than most most membership groups like we're doing of course it is because we're we don't do things because we're weird. And it's like six week challenges, but not challenges where you're going all out. It's almost a challenge in simplifying a challenge in opting out maybe where you're just focusing

on one thing during a challenge instead of everything. And as we go through checking these boxes off in our spending, by the other side, you're going to be an intentional spender. I hope that is our goal and that you can really say, like, maybe I see myself as frugal now, but I really want to be a more refined version of frugal and I'd like to help those around me be more frugal, and I don't know how to do that.

This is how we're hoping to do that, so that you can you can better it in yourself, more self discovery, and you can also help friends. You know, you don't just have to say like, oh are you you're buying the appetizer and the drink. You can like have informed questions to be like what do you love most the appetizer or the drink? What do you love about these things? And teach people how to embark on their own journey of self discovery empathetically. And I think that that's why

you can't get that outside of membership. It is about the community. So much of what we've already done and built you can't do. You can do a challenge on your own, but they're no fun unless you've got other people to check in with who are doing the same things, realizing new things about themselves, pushing you in new ways, giving you new ideas and creativity. Like there's we can go so much further together. And I think this provides just like the greenhouse for growth. Yeah, it's going to

absolutely be a greenhouse. And I mean so much through so much goodness, so much starshine. This I mean and this half off deal will never be seen again. So if you are on the fence, please join us. You have nothing to lose except for bad spending habits. I see what you did there, Like twist love this one.